Elizabeth Morgan Act

The Elizabeth Morgan Act refers to an Act of the United States Congress.

Hilary Antonia Foretich (b. 1982), later known as Ellen Morgan, was at the center of a well-publicized international custody case in the late 1980s. Hilary's maternal grandparents took her to New Zealand, defying a court order that Hilary have unsupervised visitation with her father, Eric Foretich. Her mother, plastic surgeon Elizabeth Morgan, spent 25 months in detention from 1987 to 1989 for contempt of court in Washington, D.C., for refusing to reveal Hilary's whereabouts. Elizabeth Morgan had alleged that Eric Foretich had sexually abused their daughter, an accusation that he has vehemently denied and that was never proved in court.cite web | author=Associated Press | year= 2003| title = "Court strikes down law passed for mother who hid daughter" | Work= "The Associated Press" | url=http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/12/16/jailed.mother.ap/| accessdate= February 16| accessyear=2007]

Elizabeth Morgan was freed in 1989 by an Act of Congress and joined her daughter and parents in New Zealand. The U.S. Congress passed the Elizabeth Morgan Act in 1996, which permitted Hilary, who by then called herself Ellen Morgan, to decide whether or not to see her father. The 14-year-old returned with her mother to the United States, but declined to see her father. Eric Foretich sued in 1997. The law was overturned as a bill of attainder by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2003, but had no practical effect on Hilary, who was by then 21 and could choose for herself whether or not to see her father.

Notes

References

*"Hilary's Trial: The Elizabeth Morgan Case, A Child's Ordeal in America's Legal System." by Jonathan Groner. New York: American Lawyer Books and Simon & Schuster, 1991. Reviewed in 116 Library Journal, page 89 (May 1, 1991), and by 23 University of West Los Angeles Law Review, pp. 373-8 (1992) and by 8 International Journal of Law & the Family 342-4 (Aug 1992).

Further reading

* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,958575,00.html A Hard Case of Contempt: Elizabeth Morgan: Mother Courage or a paranoid liar?] TIME, Inc. 09/18/89
* [http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-kidnap-epcroll3,0,3948757.story Judge Had Conflict, His Critics Say]
* [http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/153/articles/barringer.htm Prison Releases a Defiant Mother] The New York Times 09/25/89, Archive by Timothy M. Hagle
* [http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/153/articles/coyle.htm A Question of Contempt: The cases of two jailed mothers put the issue of civil contempt reform in the spotlight.] National Law Journal 10/30/89
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20070423182743/http://www.ncfc.net/morgnzld.txt Morgan - Foretich Fight Ends — for Now; Mother Wins in New Zealand, but Is Said to Desire Return to U.S.] Washington Post 12/01/90
*"A Mother's Right: The Elizabeth Morgan Story", a TV movie.
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20010419230630/www.springfield.va.us/organizations/arch.html ARCH]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042002023.html Antonia Morgan; Fled U.S. With Granddaughter 1915 - 2006]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20051207115158/http://www.washingtonian.com/people/deadlytriangle.html Deadly Triangle] Online Washingtonian 06/01/02